Articles in category: Smart Grid

Solar and wind are clearly the future of energy, yet the adoption of renewables has been largely constrained by their intermittent nature. Innovations in energy storage technology might change that. In the last year alone energy storage has grown by 6 GWh of capacity globally and it has the potential to grow 13 times present levels by 2024. With energy storage costs having fallen by 85% since 2010, solar-plus-storage suddenly becomes a great option, especially when combined with the fast growth of solar and wind markets. All these developments are set to remake the renewable energy landscape.

ComEd sees a significant role for energy storage on Illinois’ electric grid as the state works toward realizing its ambitious renewable goals. The utility won’t be the only one with a role to play. As they seek to demonstrate the value of storage, state regulators will consider incentives, and developers will have to continue to make it more affordable and efficient.

Ameren Missouri last week filed a $6.3 billion Smart Energy Plan with state regulators, sketching out an aggressive slate of projects the utility wants to complete in the next five years. The investments include $1 billion in projects slated for this year and $1 billion for wind energy in 2020. Ameren wants to modernize its electric grid, also adding more solar energy and battery storage to boost reliability, particularly in rural areas.

Portland General Electric Company and NextEra Energy Resources, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy, plan to construct a new energy facility in Eastern Oregon combining 300 MW of wind generation with 50 MW of solar generation and 30 MW of battery storage. The new project, called the Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facility, will be the first of this scale in North America to co-locate and integrate these three technologies, creating an improved zero-emissions resource and accelerating Oregon’s transition to clean energy.

GE is rebuilding its clean energy business by combining its renewables, energy storage and grid infrastructure units. The reorganization, announced today, makes a lot of sense. A modernized grid, with strategically placed storage is essential for renewable energy penetration to climb and the Holy Grail of ‘renewables-as-baseload’ to be achieved. The company’s involvement in the sector is already vast and varied spanning wind, solar and hydro. It has become increasingly involved in hybrid projects paired with energy storage. Pulling in its parallel grid infrastructure business completes the set.

Puget Sound Energy (PSE) has selected the Sunverge platform to test the integration of battery storage technology as part of its Smart Grid demonstration efforts. The Smart Grid is designed to help customers save money and energy, while helping PSE improve grid reliability and reduce its carbon footprint. Sunverge is an open platform for creating a grid-aware energy source from fleets of behind-the-meter Distributed Energy Resources (DERs).

Batteries in private households will be now able to perform the “same tasks as a conventional power plant”, across the whole of Germany, the CEO of Sonnen has said, following a ruling that opens up grid services markets to the company’s devices. Sonnen last week announced that it has obtained pre-qualification to enter Germany’s Primary Control Reserve market by grid operator TenneT for its battery energy storage units installed across the country. Primary Control Reserve is a form of frequency regulation, keeping the grid to within acceptable boundaries of its optimum 50Hz operating frequency.

Ontario's Global Adjustment (GA) charge is creating a behind-the-meter energy storage boom. Energy storage developers are flocking to Ontario offering large industrial customers tools to cut their demand, which is directly linked to the level of GA charge they have to pay. Industrial customers have had to pay a majority of their electricity bills to the GA charge, which the Ontario government established in 2005.

SAULT STE. MARIE, ON (AUGUST 13, 2018) – Today PUC Distribution, the designated electricity Local Distribution Company (LDC), for the City of Sault Ste. Marie in Ontario, Canada, together with its operating affiliate PUC Services, announced they are partnering with Fluence, a global energy storage technology and services company, to bring innovative energy management solutions to their largest customers. The partnership should result in both cost savings on these customers’ monthly energy bills and a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Fluence, a market leader in energy storage solutions jointly owned by Siemens and the AES Corporation, will work with PUC Services to help better manage energy delivery during peak demand, while contributing to Canada’s strict new federal carbon reduction mandates.

Electric vehicles are part of a sustainable energy/transportation ecosystem that also includes charging infrastructure, smart grid technology, and renewable energy. The key that ties all of these components together is energy storage. Storage, specifically batteries, is the enabling technology that makes modern EVs possible, and that makes renewable energy viable. Battery storage also provides a number of other benefits for the electrical grid, such as load balancing and frequency regulation.

Rome, May 7th 2018 -Enel Green Power joins the European OSMOSE project as a partner, which seeks to foster the spread of renewable energy at the international level through the development of integrated systems and services. More specifically, the trials will focus on renewables, storage systems, smart grid management and demand response technologies. The Enel Group will take part in the trials with the Potenza Pietragalla wind farm and the San Fiorano pumped-storage hydropower plant, with the aim of finding new flexibility solutions to support the electric system.

Eandis is a distribution grid systems operator with activities in 229 cities and municipalities throughout Flanders in Belgium, responsible for 2.7 million electricity connections. Eandis recently added some 375 kWp rooftop solar power to its logistical center in Lokeren. To match the intermittent solar energy production with its own operations, it is now implementing Alfen's battery energy storage system called TheBattery. TheBattery contributes to the increasing electrification of the site, enabling the shift from fossil fuel powered machinery and vehicles towards electricity as source of energy.

Behind-the-meter battery startup Stem has raised $80 million in a Series D round, with three new investors -- including one that’s helping bring the company’s lithium-ion battery systems to a new international market. The oversubscribed round was led by growth equity firm Activate Capital. It was joined by Singapore-based investment firm Temasek and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, which manages about CAD $180 billion Canadian (USD $145 billion) in Canada’s largest single-profession pension fund.

It's been an interesting year for mergers and acquisitions in the distributed energy space, with some unexpected developments. We haven't seen the same massive M&A deals of years past, such as GE’s purchase of Alstom or Honeywell’s acquisition of Elster -- although Tuesday's announcement that smart metering and utility software provider Aclara was being sold for $1.1 billion to Hubbell Inc. helped bring this year's total closer to the peaks of the past.

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 12, 2017 -- Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) today announced that it will partner with the University of California-Irvine's Advanced Power & Energy Program to design an "Advanced Energy Community" in an underserved neighborhood in Huntington Beach. The community will be planned as a replicable model that optimizes a full spectrum of diverse energy options, including solar, wind, and renewable natural gas. It will also consider the capability of storing wind- and solar-generated energy with power-to-gas technology. "We're excited to co-fund this worthy project in collaboration with the California Energy Commission," said Lisa Alexander, vice president of customer solutions and communications at SoCalGas. "Creating an Advanced Energy Community will serve as a guide for future policy and planning in California to keep our energy system sustainable and make a difference in our clean-energy future."

Grid modernization is not just a New York-California issue anymore. Committed and proposed expenditures are accelerating into the billions across the country, with no sign of a slowdown in sight. The grid's vulnerability to increasingly extreme weather and its consequences is apparent to everybody, and it must be strengthened, Centerpoint Energy CEO Scott Prochazka said. "Electricity is about 5% of GDP, but it is the first 5% because reliable energy supports every other aspect of the economy," he noted.

A unique partnership between Penn State and industry members is working to advance solar and wind energy through energy storage and microgrid systems education and training. The Energy Storage and Microgrid Training and Certification (ESAM-TAC) program is part of the GridSTAR Center, a smart grid education and research center at Penn State at The Navy Yard, located in Philadelphia.

On September 20, Hurricane Maria swept across Puerto Rico, destroying its electricity grid. The storm felled half of the cross-island transmission towers. Nine out of 10 back-alley power poles blew down. Every single customer on the island lost power. Amid the wreckage lies an opportunity for Puerto Rico to rebuild stronger and smarter. Tesla chief Elon Musk said his company power the island with solar and energy storage. “The Tesla team has done this for many smaller islands around the world, but there is no scalability limit, so it can be done for Puerto Rico too," he tweeted.

For the first time STORNETIC has delivered a Flywheel Energy Storage system to EDF. The storage device DuraStor® has safely reached the EDF Concept Grid site in Moret-sur-Loing near Paris where it will serve within a joint project on advanced smart grid storage solutions. The project serves to assess the performance of flywheel energy storage technology facing the demands of a modern grid environment and special customer requirements.

A decade may not seem like a remarkably long time to have been in business, but it certainly is in the world of rooftop solar. In an industry known for its ups and downs, residential solar installer Sunrun hit the commendable milestone last week of 10 years in operation. Executive Chairman and co-founder Ed Fenster and CEO and co-founder Lynn Jurich launched Sunrun in 2007 from an attic in San Francisco and signed the company’s first customers from a booth at a county fair. Since then, Sunrun says it has built more than $2.5 billion in solar systems, saved customers more than $150 million on their energy bills and generated more than 2.4 billion kilowatt-hours of clean energy.

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) today announced REV Connect ‘17, a one-day state-sponsored event to bring together New York’s electric utilities and technology companies to create new business models and energy solutions to benefit New York electricity consumers. The event will build on the progress of New York’s Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) strategy to build a clean, resilient and affordable energy system for all New Yorkers.

TORONTO, July 4, 2017 - A pole-mounted energy storage system located in Toronto's North York neighbourhood is showing positive results in the early stages of a pilot program. Put into service in August 2016, this unique energy storage system is mounted to the top of an existing hydro pole. The system stores energy during off-peak hours and releases power as needed. The project team is currently monitoring how the technology responds to real-time data. From initial results, the energy storage system has demonstrated an ability to reduce strain on the local transformer. The pilot continues to run and, if successful, it could become a standard that's rolled out with all new installations on the over 175,000 poles across the city.

MILWAUKEE, June 28, 2017-- Johnson Controls' Distributed Energy Storage System is making it easy for Clemson University to operate its world class graduate engineering building more efficiently by integrating next-generation energy storage with the building management systems and at the same time providing students and faculty the opportunity to collaborate on measuring the energy savings. The Zucker Family Graduate Education Center can draw power as needed from Johnson Controls L2000 Distributed Energy Storage System to reduce expense during times of peak cost. The system includes batteries and inverter in a single, compact package able to deliver 160kWh capacity and 50 kW power. Combining the storage and inverter into a turnkey energy storage system provides a cost-effective, easy-to-install package.

The US will provide $7.5 million to help advance India's power as part of their commitments to ensure access to affordable and reliable energy in both countries. The Ministry of Science and Technology and industry will match the commitment of US' Department of Energy, bringing the total commitment to $30 million, officials here said.